


Unexpected Protege

by Skeren



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 10:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6114316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeren/pseuds/Skeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, Danzo had ended up a touchstone for a child that was not, and never would be, part of his ROOT forces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written April 2015 and posted to my Konohawarhawk tumblr.

_This was never actually his plan when he pulled the child from his grief._

It might have taken a day out in the village, thinking through exactly how he was handling everything in the fall out of the Kyuubi, but he somehow ended up with a boy underfoot more often than not. It wasn’t entirely impossible that Hiruzen had taken such a close watch on the child because of his own interest, but he would never point it out to the child. He had no reason to be cruel for the fun of it, after all, and such an implication could be nothing else. Instead, he focused on how it impacted his own life. 

Which was a rather large amount, he came to realize.

Still, he didn’t know how that had led to the boy practically moving into his home, nor why he seemed to have decided that he was more than capable of taking care of the household chores for him. When the boy had taken charge of the cleaning, he’d been amused, but unconcerned, certain that the child would tire of fussing around his home quick enough. Somehow, that still had yet to happen. If anything, the boy had used it as an opportunity to settle deeper into his house.

This morning, however, was the first try that the boy had given to cooking for him, and he truly wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Especially given… the mess… It was a truly extensive mess, strewn all over his kitchen, and no section seemed to be fully unscathed. There was flour over the ground from an obvious drop, and some batter had gotten to the cabinets and the ceiling to one side of the room from, most likely, losing control of a bowl during mixing. And then, as a final flourish, the boy seemed to have jammed the sink, which had overflowed, and he was sure the boy would claim ‘only a little’, onto the floor, thus gumming the flour there.

The entire picture was more than enough to turn him right around to return to bed, because he had absolutely no interest in getting himself into that mess. Maybe, when he woke up the next time, said mess would be gone.

It was not to be.

“Wait!” Closing his eyes as he heard the child hurrying to where he stood, Danzo repressed a sigh. “I made you breakfast!”

The boy’s tone was so enthusiastic he was certain the child had yet to look at what he’d actually done to the room he was in. “Yes… I noticed you were cooking.”

He felt little hands grab onto the back of his shirt, and this time he did sigh, looking to the boy, who simply gave him a bright smile and started to push him away from the mess. “It’s not in here! I was just getting tea finished before I got you. Go, go, to the table!”

Danzo looked forward after a moment of eying the child, and was surprised to see two rather neat settings… which had nothing at all to do with flour if he was looking at the meal correctly. “Get the tea then come sit.” He waved the child away, settling at the table and sitting back, clearly waiting for the boy to return. “After breakfast, we’ll see the extent of the damage to the kitchen, mm?”

Iruka paused, then seemed to get even brighter in his smiles as he realized what was actually meant, and a moment later the child went running out of the room to do as told. 

He’d see about scolding the boy later, he was sure, but for the moment…

He couldn’t remember last time someone had cooked for him just because they wanted to.


	2. Chapter 2

_Dreams and memories can be equally terrible._

The boy was crying again. 

Danzo, unable to truly stop himself from reacting to noises in his home, had woken at the cut off scream that had come from down the hall in the room Iruka had claimed as his own. He didn’t move though, not immediately, because this had been happening for weeks, and thus far he hadn’t actually tried to comfort the child. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from being awake and listening, so he got out of bed, moving down the hall to the child’s door and lingering there.

He could pinpoint the exact moment when the child noticed him, because there was always a sudden pause in the tears, like a held breath, and he had the idle thought that the boy would be an excellent sensor if he ever got the training for it. He would be an excellent many things, if he ever trained for them actually. It was a reason he’d been putting subtle training concepts in the boy’s head, lightly prodding here and there to steer him along the path toward picking up the skills on his own. But… but that was not in the middle of the night, when the boy screamed over the past and then cried out his sorrows. 

No, now it was him waiting until he was sure the boy noticed him, then moving away from the door, slipping down the hall in the opposite direction of his room to go into the kitchen and make tea. Not a word was said as he worked, and when the child came into the room, he pretended he didn’t notice him at all… even though the only cup of tea he made was set on the table by the child as he headed back to his room after barely a glance at the boy.

It was an interesting routine, and Danzo honestly wasn’t sure why he’d started it. However, he did know he could never sleep again until he’d completed it now that he’d begun.

* * *

Danzo hadn’t had any true nightmares in years. He’d mastered the art of repressing his negativity, of pushing it down and hiding it in places where it couldn’t damage him, or his work, but it didn’t mean that nothing ever got to him. Sometimes it was something small, something he overlooked, that triggered the dreams, more night terrors, as he remembered things he wished he didn’t. 

Thankfully, those were so much rarer than the nightmares, the simple dreams that left his skin feeling raw from the inside, and it wasn’t this night that something lingered in his thoughts. No, his waking was sharp and brutal, with him sitting straight up in bed and able to remember nothing of what had woken him. Still, the sensation of phantom pain, already fading, made him shudder, grateful not to know what had thrust him so rudely from sleep. 

Unfortunately, now that he was alert, he doubted that he would be able to go back to sleep at all, instead being hounded by the sense that something was going to attack him at a moment’s notice. Deciding that the only remedy to settle his nerves would be tea, he slipped off to the kitchen to make himself some… only to see Iruka there, half asleep and poking at his teacups, two, while clearly trying not to fall back to sleep where he stood.

It made him wonder if he’d tossed and turned, to have woken the child as well… but he said nothing, and when the child sat across from him and pushed over a cup, he merely accepted it with a nod. Nothing was said as they sipped, and when the boy fell asleep on the table…

Well, when the boy fell asleep on the table, it only seemed right that Danzo put him back in bed, before returning to his own, suddenly finding that perhaps he could sleep after all.


	3. Chapter 3

_It’s not passive aggressive if it’s not_ his _pranks…_

He was well aware that the boy liked to play pranks. In fact, it wouldn’t be beyond the bounds of the truth to say he encouraged the boy in the matter. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he ‘conveniently’ left things where the boy might be able to use them that he clearly 'had no further use for.’

He personally felt that it was a useful way to hone the boy’s trap making skills in a non-lethal way. It was also constructive evasion and stealth training, which was presented in a way that suited the boy’s natural personality. Thus… 'unneeded’ odds and ends would just be left around. It was entirely possible that the child knew full well what he was doing, but if he didn’t point it out, there was no need for Danzo to change his behavior either. 

It most definitely gave him something to amuse him, and he would regret the day the child stopped, just a bit, because the village really was a dark place after so many losses had happened the autumn before. Until then, however, he was content to spend some of his saved money on bits and bobs, paint and powders that would be used to terrorize people well above the child’s rank. Or current lack of rank rather.

If he weren’t who he was, he might have pitied those people for falling into the traps the child set… but he was not, and did not, because he felt that those shinobi had more than enough motivation to remember to check things before bumbling into a trap set by a little boy. Little boys had been used on the field in the past, and were honestly ingenious creatures. Children hadn’t learned that the word 'impossible’ could apply to them too, and thus, would try and learn to do absolutely anything. 

Sometimes they succeeded. 

He would encourage the boy to learn how to do that effectively, so that when he was older he would know what to look for, how not to be those shinobi caught in traps made by little hands…

And he would see what became of him then.


End file.
